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Applied Linguistics Advance Access originally published online on July 1, 2007
Applied Linguistics 2008 29(1):1-23; doi:10.1093/applin/amm013
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© Oxford University Press 2008

Applied Linguistics Redux: A Derridean Exploration of Alzheimer Lifehistories

Vaidehi Ramanathan

University of California, Davis


  Abstract

Advocating a position of self-critique, whereby we revisit our old research sites to dis-assemble our prior thinking in relation to our current cognitions, this paper offers, among other things, a critical revisitation and Derridean interpretation of one of my previous long-term, ethnographic endeavours: my extended work with the memories and lifehistories of patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Gathered over the span of three and a half years, this body of research was devoted to countering several psycholinguistic strains characterizing Alzheimer speech. Revisiting that work given my current cognitions raises, among other things, Derridean questions about ‘originals’. If it seemed that the scholarship first produced was the ‘original’, is the (present) paper produced as a result of critical re-visitation an original of a different, receding (or progressing) kind? Uncovering ways in which I, in retrospect, interpret Alzheimer's discourse from a Derridean perspective raises critical issues relating to our evolving cognitions and knowledge-making practices. In other words, what is the status of claims we make in the course of our research and how do these impact disciplinary ideologies? The paper also raises quasi-philosophical questions about the nature of ‘texts’, ‘originals’ and ‘presences’, and ‘truths’.

Received for publication 1 January 2007.
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